December 22, 2013 // 1:33 am - ATLUS PR Manager John Hardin announced today that the Dragon's Crown new difficulty and dungeon are available via PSN today!

To quote: 'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house, No DualShock was stirring because you didn't know there was a new Dragon's Crown patch out.

The players are all partying in the tavern with cheer, Because "Holy Crap!" a new difficulty level and dungeon are here!

I'm fairly certain that's how that poem begins, and I refuse to accept any corrections to it.

It's been a while since Dragon's Crown launched, but we haven't stopped working to make it better. We added cross play, improved the game balance, and tweaked many things to make the game even more fun. You would think we were done by now, but today we have a true holiday miracle for you: another brand new feature.

So knock the cobwebs off your Fighters, Elves, Wizards, and the rest, because we're adding in a lot of new content with The Fifth Dragon's Crown Patch.

If you've ever played a Vanillaware game before (Odin Sphere and Muramasa: Rebirth spring to mind), you know the brutal difficulty the games are known for. We got the impression that a lot of people didn't feel Dragon's Crown was hard enough on the way to level 99, so now there's a brand new Ultimate difficulty level.

After you clear the ninth layer of the Labyrinth of Chaos, you can access the new difficulty in the Temple.

So what's it do? Well, it makes things harder, for one. But harder monsters mean players need to be better, stronger, and faster, so we're raising the level cap from 99 to 255. You read that right, you now have 156 levels to grind out.

"But that's a lot of grinding the same levels over and over again," you'll say. Well, we have you covered there, too! Once you're on Ultimate difficulty, there will be a new dungeon unlocked, called the Tower of Mirages. It's randomly generated and it has tens of thousands of levels. TENS. OF. THOUSANDS. I say this with all sincerity, since I know some of you are going to try to KO it: "Good luck."

Finding it hard to give up your maxed-out Dwarf to start a new character? We fixed that too (sort of). As long as you have a save file with the Story mode cleared, you can make a new character that skips over that part and leads straight into the Talisman collection quest. Now there are no excuses for not making alts!

In addition to all that, we threw in a few other improvements for gameplay stability and various other tweaks to controls, NPCs, and character skills.

So go forth this holiday season and enjoy all the new stuff from Dragon's Crown!